Memoirs Of Count Grammont. A New Translation, With Notes And Illustrations, Embellished With Seventy-Six Portraits, Of The Principal Characters Mentioned In The Work.
Hamilton, A[nthony].

London:
Printed For S. And E.Harding,
[1793].
The best English edition of these famous memoirs of the amorous intrigues at the court of Charles II during 1662-4.
Seventy-eight engraved plates from portraits in the royal collections at Windsor and elsewhere.
Offsetting from plates, occasional light foxing. A very good copy.
Half early twentieth-century red crushed morocco over decorative boards. Gilt spine with raised bands, top edge gilt.
Quarto.
pp. [2, engraved title],
(Item ID: 11640)

$650.00

Hamilton (1646?-1720) was the third son of Sir George Hamilton. He served as governor of Limerick (1685) and privy councillor (1686). He commanded the Jacobite dragoons at Enniskillen and Newtown Butler in 1689. He spent his later life at St. Germain-en-Laye, being intimate with the Duke of Berwick, addressing letters and verses tot he Duchess of Berwick and Laura Bulkeley, and writing for Henrietta Bulkeley four satirical Contes in French. His Epistle to the Comte de Grammont (his brother-in-law), announcing his intending of writing his memoirs, was approved by Boileau in 1705. The Mémoires appeared anonymously in 1713. It was enthusiastically received, and went through dozens of editions, both in French and in English. Voltaire said of it: de tous les livres celui où le fonds le plus mince est paré du style le plus gai, le plus vif et le plus original (Oeuvres, 1785, xx, 101, as quoted in DNB).